I second everything that's been said about the new kisses. I'm not sure what the response from us as fans needs to be, but I do know we need to have a response to make sure Larian knows they dropped the ball big time here. They don't punish the player in any other romance/route, so why here? You can murder a Grove full of druids and tieflings or become the Absolute, and the game doesn't actively punish you for any of it. You just lose some side quests. But a late game romance you have to actively sacrifice 7000 souls to get and constantly agree to take part in? Can't let the fans interpret that as anything but abusive! There's a reason they didn't give ascended Astarion a kiss in the epilogue (no it wasn't an oversight and at this point I don't think they'll ever give that kiss to the fans because they don't want to do that), and this feels like continuation of that theme of punishing a specific category of players for making choices they provded for us to make. Like the dark undertone in the romance until this patch was good. I say this as someone who writes primarily dark romance. People who engage in dark romance tend to be aware that they're not things you want in real life. Larian seems to not be aware of that. Larian doesn't seem to understand that people RPing a character choosing to sacrifice 7000 souls to make one person happy might know that's not a good guy choice, and they're actively playing a character that wants what Astarion is offering. Larian really seems to want you to play the game a certain way and they can't stand that you don't do what they want. For example as much as I like having Minthara recruitable, I can't help but feel that they just took the only real incentive people had to play "the evil route". Now it seems they're trying to push people away from ascending Astarion. I do wonder what's next on the chopping block. Siding with Gortash maybe.
Idk maybe we should just send Larian direct feedback and explain why what they've done is so bad; it takes away player agency and choice to the extreme (and player choice was one of their selling points so maybe they should remember that) and triggers abuse survivors for a start. I dunno if it would accomplish anything but clogging their feedback inbox, but in an ideal world it would get the message across. I mean they made a game for adults. It's rated 18/M. It would be nice if they remembered that, and trusted their target audience of adults to be aware that sacrificing 7000 souls for one guy's happiness is bad, and just let the romance be a proper dark romance.
I would suggest trying to convey these thoughts to Larian.Maybe a petition or something? I really don't think Larian will listen to anything. I am extremely disappointed in what they do and what they say in interviews.
And I really don’t like that they impose their opinion in RPG....This approach is not bad, but in other genres where there is no player avatar and choice.
